Shawn Fanning’s Online Brokerage

"If forging a truce between the record labels and peer-to-peer services is dark, then Shawn Fanning — the creator of the original Napster file-sharing program — is guilty as charged.

"His aim with Snocap is not to sell tunes directly to consumers but to create a central global clearinghouse for digital music — a back-end system equipped with technology to monitor, authorize, and monetize the swapping of copyrighted tracks."